I’ve already posted two different version of Sichuan string beans–both of them dry fried. There’s the more traditional one with pork and a vegetarian variation.

There’s a reason I’ve done two different versions of the recipe–it’s one of my favorite Chinese dishes ever.

I’m in good company–it was also Zak’s Grandma Doris’ favorite Chinese dish.

There’s just something about the chewy texture of the beans with lightly crispy, browned exterior and the sweet, concentrated bean flavor (concentrated because dry frying cooks out most of the water in the beans) that is ultimately satisfying. Add Sichuan peppercorns, chilies, and preserved Sichuan vegetable–and it’s a beautiful combination of flavors, textures and colors.

So why am I posting a third version of it?

Because I can introduce you to another cooking technique, tell you about a great Sichuan restaurant in Columbus AND because I can write about a really good recipe all in one post. That’s why, so there.

First, about that Sichuan Restaurant in Columbus (2869 Olentangy River Road, next to Buckeye Bar & Grill). Zak and I read about it on alt.eats.columbus and after their ringing endorsement, we had to go and try it out.

So we did.

And it was GOOD.

In fact, it’s pretty much the best Sichuan food I’ve had since we moved away from Maryland that I didn’t cook my own self. Now, I have to admit, I like my own Ma Po Tofu better, but their Dry Fried Beef and Lamb with Fresh Chili and Cumin rock my world.

The last time we were there, we tried their “Mala String Beans,” which is their own variation on Sichuan Dry Fried String Beans.

The restaurant, however, didn’t dry fry the beans–they oil blanched them just until the skins of the beans wrinkled and crisped and there were only a couple of browned spots on the beans. Dry frying produces a smokier, more browned result–these beans were slightly juicier because more water was left in them, brighter green and with a slightly crisper texture.

They also had been cooked with thinly sliced fresh garlic, dried chili peppers and thinly sliced fresh chilies, with copious amounts of who Sichuan peppercorns sprinkled throughout. There was a tiny drizzle of soy sauce in the dish, and perhaps the tiniest sprinkling of sugar, but I am not positive about that.

They were addictive. Not too salty, not too sweet, not wet, not dry. Ringing with spices.

As Baby Bear of Goldilocks fame would say, they were “just right.”

So, of course, I had to try and make them at home.

And, as per usual, I had to go and meddle with the recipe somewhat to make it my own. Besides, I had about a quarter pound of King Family Farm bacon unused in my fridge that would be a shame to let go to waste.

But before we start into the recipe, let’s talk a bit about oil blanching.

Oil blanching is a technique used in Chinese cooking, primarily Cantonese and Sichuan cooking, to impart a special texture and flavor to the food that is cooked in this manner. It is an expensive technique, so it tends to be used more in festival foods, restaurant cooking, and banquet cookery, but it can be done in the home. I personally wouldn’t do it often myself–it uses too much oil for my own sense of health and a happy food budget, but it’s perfectly fine to do it every now and then.

Basically, using a wok, which means you will ultimately use less oil, you heat up enough oil to just cover the food you are blanching–you can do it in two or three batches if need be–and you heat it until a chopstick or a bit of the food you are cooking put into it foams up and boils merrily away in the oil. I heat the oil on medium heat to keep it from smoking and starting to break down–it takes a wee bit longer that way, but you end up with a better tasting end result.

For this recipe, I used about 3/4 inch of oil in the bottom of my wok. It was just enough to cover my string beans and have them float without crowding themselves in the oil.

After it’s heated up, you add the food you are going to cook–and before you add it you make certain it’s perfectly dry on the outside unless you like sputtering oil spattered all over yourself and your kitchen–and stir it with a chopstick to break it all up and distribute it evenly.

Then you let it cook until it’s just cooked through, remove it from the oil and drain it on paper towels. When you are finished with the oil–you can filter it and use it again, but after oil blanching any vegetable, you are better off discarding it because it’s full of liquid that has cooked out of the oil, and with the water in the oil, it won’t really cook anything well again. It also takes on a funny odor after a while.

But that’s all there is to oil blanching, which you need to know about to replicate this recipe.

Oh, one more thing–if you leave out the bacon, the result will taste more like what we had at Fortune. If you keep the bacon in and you aren’t a vegetarian, I bet you’ll be happier.

Put the oil into the wok and heat up on medium heat until a green bean dropped into the oil will immediately start bubbling and frothing away.

When it’s hot, add all the green beans at once, and using a bamboo chopstick, maneuver them around until they are distributed evenly in the oil without overlaying each other at all.

Cook, stirring with the chopstick now and again, until the color of the beans deepens and brightens, the skin wrinkles up and just begins to brown and crisp in a few spots on the edges. Fish the beans out with a skimmer, and drain on layers of paper towels.

Discard the oil, leaving a shiny, thin layer on the wok. Wipe the wok clean on the outside and put it on the heat again, and raise the flame to high.

Add the bacon to the wok and cook, stirring until it’s half done. Add the garlic, scallions, chilies and peppercorns at this time and cook, stirring until the bacon is done and the garlic and scallions are golden brown. Add the beans back in and cook, stirring, one more minute.

Turn off the heat, add the soy sauce and sesame oil, and sprinkle in salt to taste–probably about a pinch will do.

Even though, when I was growing up, it only appeared on my Grandma or Mom’s tables fried with marinara sauce (and there’s nothing wrong with that, mind you), fairly early on in life I was introduced to moussaka and baba ganoush through Mom’s Greek friends, Pete and Sylvia, and my Aunt Nancy, who’s half Syrian, and loved all sorts of eggplant-based goodies. (Half Syrian, half Portuguese, and ALL good. I love Aunt Nancy, who lovingly broadened my food horizons from a very early age, God bless her.) My Uncle George, Mom’s brother and Aunt Nancy’s husband, loved Eggplant Parmesan so much that it was the only thing he ordered at Joe Fazio’s when we went out to celebrate his birthday, but even so, he’d let me have a bite to try it when I was very, very small. Fried eggplant, great marinara and melted mozzarella cheese–what’s not to love?

But, when I was younger, the only eggplant I knew about or ate was the Rubenesque deep violet aubergines that are commonly grown throughout the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions. I’d never heard of, or even seen one of the long, thin, pale violet colored Asian Eggplants that are now fairly commonly seen in farmer’s markets, Asian markets and even some regular old grocery stores around the US.

They don’t even really look like eggplants being that they aren’t egg shaped, but are instead slender and curved, like long, stretched out teardrops. Most commonly they are either deep purple, like their plump cousins, or a pretty rosy violet color, but sometimes they are white, or striped violet and white or even a pretty mint green.

No matter what color these pretty Asian eggplants are, they have several things in common. One, when picked young, they have very few seeds. Two, they almost all lack any of the bitterness which can sometimes plague the more common chubby eggplants, and so never need to be pre-treated with salt. Three, they do share the ability to act as sponges with their larger cousins, and so are very good at taking up and holding flavorful sauces and oils.

They are used in the cuisines of China, Japan and Thailand, where their abilities to soak up flavor is used to great effect. In Japan, they are grilled with a miso marinade, in Thailand they are cooked in coconut milk-based curries, and in China, they can be either deep fried or stir fried then served in a sauce.

My personal favorite is a Sichuan dish where thin slices or slender shreds of young Asian eggplant are stir fried with minced pork and served with what is technically called, “Fish Flavored Sauce,” but which is usually translated into English as “Garlic Sauce.” The eggplant is soft and slippery and bathed in the darkly sweet, hot, tangy sauce, while the minced pork bits are sweet and a bit chewy. Sometimes shreds or slices of fresh water chestnut are used to add crispness and a shattering sugar flavor to the dish, but I’ve most often had it in restaurants with just the eggplant and pork.

Eggplants are madly in season right now–there are piles of them in all shapes, sizes and colors at the Farmer’s Market these days, so I picked up a couple of the little Asian ones to add to some stir fry or another.

It wasn’t until I was digging around in the vegetable drawer to find something for dinner a couple of nights later that I came up with this dish which is a twist on the traditional Sichuan Eggplant with Pork and Garlic Sauce that I love, but seldom find in restaurants. Lacking fresh water chestnuts, I came upon some beautiful green beans and decided to use those to make a crispy counterpoint to the richly soft and unctuous eggplant.

Since the green beans are long and thin, I decided to cut the eggplant into shreds to match the shape of the beans. According to Chinese culinary traditions, matching the shapes of your ingredients is a more aesthetic way to cook, and it ensures that foods cook evenly in the wok. Cutting Asian eggplants into shreds is simple–just cut the fruits into steeply diagonal 1/4″ thick slices so that you are making long ovals, then stack the slices and cut those into 1/4″ wide shreds. Voila–simplicity itself.

Instead of mincing the pork tenderloin (which is what I had), I shredded it as well–by cutting it into slices against the grain, and then cutting each slice into a 1/4″ thick shred.

When it came to cooking the dish–I put the eggplant into the wok not long after the pork so it had plenty of time to soak up the flavors of the minced scallion, garlic and ginger that is put into the wok on top of the pork. Basically, I waited until the pork was half cooked–the colors showing were equal parts brown and pink–before tossing in the eggplant, and then stir fried as normal, putting in the blanched green beans when most of the pork shows brown instead of pink. Then, in went the already blended sauce components, and within about a minute and a half, the sauce is reduced and thickened, everything is cooked through and all that is needed is a sprinkling of scallion tops to bring everything to a delicious finish.

How did it taste?

Amazing. Using green beans in a dish of eggplant and pork with garlic sauce may not be traditional, but I don’t care, because it’s damned good. Zak said it was one of the best things I’ve cooked in a long while, and he and I and Kat pretty much ate the entire platter in one sitting.

Mind you, I said almost. There was also enough left over the next morning for a nice cold topping over warmed over rice for breakfast.

Stir together the first eight ingredients–from the vinegar to the cornstarch–in a small cup or bowl until well combined. Set aside.

Heat wok over a burner on high until a thin ribbon of smoke spirals up from the steel or iron surface. Pour in the canola or peanut oil and heat for another 30-60 seconds, until the oil shimmers and moves lightly over the surface of the wok.

Add the pork in one layer and allow to sit on the surface of the wok, undisturbed, for a minute, or until the meat browns well on the bottom side. As soon as the pork is settled into the wok and arranged so it can brown, sprinkle the minced scallion, garlic and ginger evenly over the meat, then sprinkle the eggplant evenly over that.

Once the meat is well browned on the bottom, stir and fry until most of the meat is brown with only a little bit of pink showing. Some of the aromatic bits will likely stick to the wok, but don’t worry over that much. Add the green beans and stir fry for about ten seconds, then pour in the sauce ingredients, and cook, stirring and scraping until the sauce boils and thickens and everything is fragrant and cooked through.

Stir in the scallion tops, and remove from heat. Scrape into a heated platter and serve immediately with steamed rice.

Those sweet green goodies have been driving me mad for three days because they’ve been in my crisper drawer, waiting, waiting, WAITING for me to cook them, and I haven’t been able to, but I’ve wanted to for just days and days.

See, I’ve had an ear infection and for the past three days before today, it had gotten bad enough to affect my sense of balance. And Zak made the command decision that a Barbara who pitches and yaws about like a lumbering, drunken ox is unsafe to be holding anything resembling a sharp knife or cleaver and even more unsafe to be around fire and a cast iron wok.

But, I had a doctor’s appointment today and I am pleased to say that with the first dose of antibiotic, bacteria were mowed down ruthlessly such that the pressure in my ear and sinuses lessened to the point that I can stand up and walk a straight, or mostly straight line. The first thing I decided to do was get in that kitchen and prep to cook up those delicious snap peas I got from the Farmer’s Market that I’ve been dreaming about for days!

They were still crisp and brilliant peridot green when I popped them on the counter and stringed them. And they smelled just like springtime ought to smell–fresh and verdant. I scrubbed baby carrots in shades of orange, yellow and violet and sliced them diagonally to go with the peas, and the colors were all so pretty it was hard not to just gobble everything up raw.

But considering how much Kat ate at dinner, I’m glad I didn’t snarf up all of the veggies myself. She ate her entire bowl of rice, chicken, peas and carrots and asked for more, all without any prompting from Mom or Dad. For those with four year old kids, you know what a victory that is! She even asked if she could have the leftovers for lunch at school tomorrow (that would be today), and she hardly ever does that…..

Anyway, this is just a simple stir-fried dish with clean, fresh flavors that enhance rather than cover the natural flavors of the chicken, peas and carrots. I used a small amount of fresh garlic, more ginger and fresh scallions as aromatics, and the flavorings were soy sauce, honey, sesame oil and mirin.

Mirin is a rice wine from Japan that is light and sweet, much more subtle and flowery in flavor than Shao Hsing wine, which is the Chinese rice wine I usually favor. I happened to have some and decided to use it and was pleased at how seamlessly it melded with the honey and light soy sauce flavors.

This is not a dry dish, but what sauce there is clings to the vegetables and chicken and does not pool on the serving plate. There is enough to flavor the rice in your bowl, but not so much that it is drippy or gooey.

The soy sauce I used in this dish is almost locally made–it’s from Kentucky, and is brewed in a Japanese style, using old bourbon barrels as fermentation vessels, so it has a distinctive smokey aftertaste. Bourbon Barrel Foods makes a mighty fine soy sauce, and is well worth seeking out and trying. It has a clean refreshing flavor with that wonderful smoky finish that I just love, and is perfect to use when you want your food to just taste oomphier and better, not soy-saucey. (Their smoked paprika is awesome as well.)

Besides, I get a kick out of using soy sauce made in Kentucky. It just makes me smile, because you don’t think Kentucky and see visions of soy sauce dancing in your head, do you? I know I don’t.

(Same as I don’t think of West Virginia and instantly muse on about tofu, but you know, the best tofu I’ve ever had, Spring Creek, is made in Spencer West Virginia, from soybeans grown here in SE Ohio, one county away from where I live. Now that I think on it, Appalachia has some mighty fine artisanal Asian foods being made in the sheltering arms of her mountains and hollers.)

But, I digress.

What was I talking about again? Oh, yes–the snap peas and the chicken dish. Right.

I was talking about the flavorings in it–right? Well, the honey is from right here in Athens County–Cantrell’s. Jack Cantrell is a great beekeeper and his honey is wonderful and I think it’s the reason why my nose hasn’t fallen off this year from the allergies. Pollen is horrible this year–the air is yellow with it, and usually when its that bad, I have two or three asthma attacks at least, but since I’ve been having a spoonful of the local honey a day, it seems to have helped me build up enough immunity to it that I can at least go outside and breathe with impunity. And, you know, honey sure tastes better than Benedryl!

And the sesame oil is the final flavoring ingredient–always be sure and use the toasted sesame oil for the best flavor and add it at the end of cooking so it stays fresh tasting and doesn’t scorch.

At any rate, here is the recipe for the dish that Kat not only ate all of her portion of, but which made our house smell so good that when we came back from seeing Kung Fu Panda 2 at the theatre, it was like stepping into Po’s Dad’s noodle shop!

Oh, and the movie was great fun, by the way, and the use of 3D was much more subtle and beautiful than I expected. (I usually am unimpressed by 3D anything.)

Toss chicken with next four ingredients and allow to marinate while you prepare the rest of the ingredients–about 20 minutes.

Heat wok over high heat until a thin ribbon of smoke rises from the heated metal surface. Add the canola or peanut oil and swirl wok to coat bottom. Allow to heat for about thirty seconds or until you can see the surface of the oil shimmer and move with convection currents.

Add the chicken, reserving any marinade that is not clinging to the meat. Spread the chicken out into a single layer on the bottom of the wok and sprinkle the garlic, scallion and ginger over the top of the chicken.

Allow the chicken to sit undisturbed on the bottom of the wok to brown for at least a minute. THEN and only then begin to stir fry, stirring constantly to keep the chicken and the aromatics from sticking.

When the chicken is mostly done–very little pink is showing–it is mostly brown and white–add the carrots, and the second measures of soy sauce, honey and mirin and keep cooking and stirring for another thirty seconds or so. Add the peas, and cook, stirring, until the chicken is done and the peas have taken on a bit of brownish color from the hot wok.

Add the lemon juice, stir it in thoroughly, remove from heat and stir in the sesame oil and cilantro.

Scrape onto a heated platter and serve right away with steamed jasmine rice.

This one is for my beloved Hadar, who asked last week for more meatless recipes.

You know, I can be just as blinkered and blind as everyone else. Here I am priding myself on my culinary creativity and it turns out that until yesterday, I never really thought about cooking radishes.

Why not?

I dunno.

I guess because I just don’t think much about radishes. They were never my favorite vegetable growing up, even if I was taught as a little kid how to carve them into roses. Lots of people in my family loathed them–they were “too spicy” and while I liked them a little bit even when they were “hot” when I was little–I much preferred raw turnips, to radishes any day. Turnips were sweeter and crunchier, though not crisper. Radishes have such a wonderful icy, crisp texture.

And, I think that texture, which was always my favorite part of radishes, was why I never thought to cook them before. If you cook them, you mess up that texture, so, why go and do THAT?

But, you see, I am the only one in my house who likes radishes a lot, especially in salads. Kat won’t touch them and Zak is skeptical, though in recent months, he has been acquiescing that some radishes in a salad with a honey-mustard vinaigrette was alright, and maybe even pretty good.

So, I was planning a stir-fry with tofu for Hadar’s recipe, and I looked in the fridge at my bounty from the farmer’s market on Saturday. There was a beautiful bok choi from Shade River Farm, as well as some orange, yellow and purple carrots from the same lovely plot of ground. I could do bok choi and three colors of carrots, but I decided to save the purple ones for Kat to eat raw because she loves them so much.

So, I kept digging in the crisper and came up with these lovely plum-colored big radishes. I think they are the variety, “Plum Purple”, which I just planted a whole packet of seeds from Seeds of Change myself. They are pretty, and crispy and crunchy, but they are a bit spicy. And I said, “Why not?” So, I sliced them into rounds, and then into half moons after giving them as scrub and a trim. I wanted that pretty rim of purple to show.

And you know what?

Radishes are AWESOME cooked! Yes, AWESOME! (It has to be all-caps. No, really, it has to be because of my utter amazement at how tasty the wee purple buggers were once they were cooked! They lose that icy crispness that they have raw, but what they gain is sweetness. They retain their earthy sharpness, but the “heat” is ameliorated by an accentuation of the natural sugars inherent to the vegetable.

You just have to be careful and put them in near the end of stir-frying so they don’t get too mushy.

So, Hadar, this one’s for you, and thanks for giving me the impetus to think about cooking radishes. You, and the rest of my readers, will be seeing more cooked radish dishes in the future. I promise. (Because I’m gonna have to figure out what to do with all the radishes I interplanted in with the tomatoes, onions, potatoes and peppers……)

Slice the tofu slightly on the diagonal into thin, narrow slices. Toss with the soy sauce, wine and 5-spice powder, then sprinkle on the cornstarch and toss until well coated. Allow to marinate for at least 20 minutes while you prep your vegetables.

When you are ready to cook, heat your wok on high heat until a thin ribbon of pale smoke rises from it and wafts straight up into the air. Add oil and allow it to heat undisturbed for at least thirty seconds, at which point it should ripple and shimmer in the bottom of the wok. Tilt the wok back and forth to distribute the oil along the sides of the wok.

Add the tofu, and spread into a thin single-layer on the bottom of the wok. Add the white minced garlic and ginger to the wok, sprinkling it over the tofu evenly. Sprinkle the sugar over it as well, and let the tofu brown undisturbed on the bottom of the wok for at least one minute. Then, begin stir-frying.

After the tofu has become fragrant and the ginger and garlic has begun to stick to the sides of the wok with the tofu marinade and brown, add the soy sauce and wine, and deglaze the wok. Add the carrots and stir fry for a minute or two, then the radishes. Immediately add the bok choy and the garlic greens, then the broth or stock and cook, stirring and scraping the sides of the wok until the liquid thickens and the bok choy leaves lightly wilt and the color of the stems darkens.

Sprinkle with the toasted sesame oil and sprinkle the pinch of salt over. Give it all one more toss, sprinkle with the salt, toss again, and scrape into a heated serving plate.

Serve with steamed brown rice for a light, but still richly flavored and hearty meal.

Note: I made this with all local vegetables and aromatics except for the ginger. You can substitute one clove of garlic and three scallions for the green garlic if you cannot find it at a farmer’s market near you.

I’ve been enamored of developing simpler stir fry recipes that are based upon the principles of Cantonese cuisine: ingredients combined to create a flavor/color/texture contrast with minimal use of condiments so as to allow the natural flavors of the food to shine through. I never really loved Cantonese cuisine when I was younger, probably because I had only eaten wretchedly greasy, relatively flavorless, gloppy versions of it at bad restaurants. And let me tell you, the versions of Cantonese food I ate as a young adult are a far cry from being accurate representations of the cuisine!

But as I have aged, I have found myself drawn to the aesthetics of the Cantonese ways with food. I think it is because I grew up eating very simple food. My grandmothers prepared vegetables, in particular, simply–with only a bit of butter, (or, bacon grease!) salt and pepper and sometimes an onion or some vinegar. Now, granted, to my taste now, they overcooked their vegetables woefully, but they still tasted good–and like themselves, though admittedly, like overcooked versions of themselves. But still delicious.

Meat was prepared in much the same way–maybe some onions, a bay leaf, salt and pepper, sometimes garlic–and that was generally it. And particularly when it was the grass-fed beef my mother’s parents raised–the meat tasted like the very essence of itself.

And that is the challenge of cooking simple food. You must let the natural flavors shine through without making the food taste bland and lacking in depth. Part of the trick of this is to start out with the best ingredients you can get your hands on, and then don’t overcook or undercook them, and for goodness sake, be judicious in the use of your aromatics, spices and condiments.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to these days, when I haven’t been busily sewing Generic Winter Holiday presents. (That’s why no recent posts–been stitching, by hand and machine–oh, and moving a friend from a nightmare house into a nice house. That took a day…) I’ve been coming up with new and simpler ways to stir-fry fairly ordinary seasonal ingredients and transform them into the very essence of themselves.

Oh, one more thing before we go on to the recipe, let’s talk about how to cut baby bok choy in half without having them fall sadly apart. See how pretty they look in the photo above? Well, they aren’t only pretty–they cook faster and more evenly in a wok if you cut them longitudinally. But, as I said, you have to cut them the correct way, or they just might fall apart on you and they also won’t be as lovely looking as my examples.

Okay, take a look at the bok choy in this photograph. I call the side that is up the “back” of the vegetable. And it is through the back that you want to cut the bok choy. If you turn the vegetable a quarter turn to the right or left–it doesn’t matter which–you will see that instead of a solid broad stem and leaf, that you are looking into the layers of the bok choy. I call that the front, and that is where you do NOT want to cut.

So, just cut through the “back” of the bok choy where you see a single broad stem and leaf, instead of through the “front” which shows the layers of the leaves. You get a prettier result that is less likely to fall apart on you.

How does this taste? Well, Kat loved it, as did Zak. I cooked it again tonight for Kat, Zak, Morganna and Brittney and the two line cooks loved it too. It is sweet, but not cloyingly so–just sweet enough to enhance the natural sweetness of the pork. The bok choy tastes green and fresh without being bitter and the mushrooms are like velvet–they all but melt in your mouth.

Toss pork with the first measures of soy sauce, mirin and honey, as well as the cornstarch. Allow to marinated for twenty minutes–which is about the amount of time it will take you to prepare the other ingredients.

Heat your wok over high heat until a thin thread of smoke spirals up from the surface. Add the canola oil and heat it until it shimmers–which should take about another thirty seconds or so.

Toss in the scallions and cook, stirring constantly, for one minute. Add the mushrooms and stir fry until the scallions take on a golden color.

Scrape the pork into the wok and arrange it into as close as a single layer as you can manage. Sprinkle with the garlic, ginger and the second measure of honey, then allow the pork to cook, undisturbed in the bottom of the wok, until it browns on that side. Then, start stir-frying again, and when it is nearly all white and brown and most of the pink is gone, deglaze the wok with the second measures of soy sauce and mirin. Add the bok choy immediately, and cook, stirring until it browns a bit and wilts slightly, and the pork is done, and a small amount of very thick brown sauce lightly glazes the ingredients.

Remove the wok from the heat and drizzle in the sesame oil and stir to combine it well. Serve with steamed rice–it is enough to feed two adults and one toddler. You can double this recipe, but if you do, either cook it in two batches, or cook the meat first, remove it from the wok and then cook the bok choy and bring everything together at the end with the second measures of mirin and soy sauce.